Biography

Boris Frederic Cecil Tay-Natey Ofuatey-Kodjoe, better known as Boris Kodjoe, is a German actor known for his roles as Jason in the 2000 film Love & Basketball (2000) and sports-courier agent Damon Carter on the Showtime drama series Soul Food (2000).

Kodjoe was born in Vienna, Austria to Ursula, a German psychologist of partially-Jewish descent, and Eric Kodjoe, a Ghanaian physician who is of the Nzema people. He was named after Russian poet and writer Boris Pasternak. Kodjoe's great-grandmother was Jewish and died in the Holocaust; his maternal grandmother survived the war in hiding. Kodjoe's parents divorced when he was six years old. Kodjoe is fluent in German, English, and French, and speaks some Spanish. He has a brother named Patrick and two sisters named Nadja and Lara.
- IMDb mini biography by: Movie Guy

Towering height

Athletic figure

[on his family history] My grandmother's part Jewish, which makes my mother and myself Jewish, by blood. But we weren't raised in the Jewish faith... on my mother's side, my maternal great-grandmother [was Jewish]. It was ironic in a way, because my grandmother wasn't pure-blooded Aryan, and therefore she wasn't considered a member of the master race. But she got pregnant by my grandfather who was 200% German. So, it was quite a tumultuous time for her, because they had to hide her for her to survive the Second World War.